A Place in Normandy (9 page)

Mme. Vera's, 1995. Photo by author

As an American, I was weaned on self-service, for which the French term is, conveniently enough,
le self-service
(since it was not a French idea in the first place, no accommodation is made for it in the language of Racine). Likewise as an American, I am never fully prepared for the intimate role assumed by the small French merchant in any transaction. The first time Julia and I went together into a fabric store (in Lisieux), to buy curtain material for M. Braye's house, which we were working on—this was in the 1970s, after the Brayes died—we were met by two smiling, nicely dressed women who stood in front of a wall faced with closed drawers. Aside from the shop sign claiming they sold cloth, there was nothing whatever to see or point to—indeed nothing visible at all, apart from a large pair of shears on a counter, to prove that cloth of any kind was to be had here. When in France, Julia usually did her shopping by acting out what she wanted; she got on fine when it came to artichokes, eggs, or fish, but imitating the fabrics and patterns she had in mind was harder. And never, ever, must the customer touch the goods once the salesperson was tricked into showing them.

In France, the customer is never right. Even if we succeeded in buying something we wanted, which after all Madame had seemed prepared to sell, we had not won. When the bell on the shop door clanged on our departure, it was not with the cheerful peal that had first welcomed the victims, but rather with a mild reproving clang of dismay.

The first time I went into Lefebvre-Foinet, a French color-merchant's in Paris, intending to buy stretcher bars and canvas, I was asked, “What does Monsieur intend to paint?” It was as if, looking to buy a pair of socks, I must, before the clerk would risk her honor by showing me the garments, answer the question “And in what circumstances will Monsieur wear the socks?”

My French, never very good, became much worse in confrontation, but I managed to express bewilderment. The salesperson quickly understood that I was at a loss and explained with another question: “Is it landscape Monsieur wishes to execute, or seascape, or a portrait?” (
“Paysage, marine, ou figure?”
)

Not sure myself what I might paint, I certainly did not think it was any of
her
business. I might well stare at the naked canvas (
toile vierge
) until its virginity disturbed me more than anything I might do to violate it. The salesperson, with the exquisite, exasperated, kindly patience that comes only with generations of training, pulled out a card on which were printed all the dimensions available in stretched canvas, divided into three categories. The
paysage
selection comprised one kind of oblong; the
marine
another, more horizontal; the
figure
yet a third, more square.

I pointed to a vertical dimension from the
figure
category and a horizontal from the
paysage.
“Suppose I want to make a canvas this by this?”

“Ah non, Monsieur,”
she told me.
“Ça ne se fait pas. C'est une fausse mesure.”
(“That is not done. That dimension is false, untrue, erroneous, wrong, spurious, base, counterfeit, forged, fictitious, sham, insincere, treacherous, deceitful, or equivocal.”) She had me where she wanted me.

She glanced about her, signaling the
patron
by means of rapid eye movements. He came forward, smiling like a man with a blackjack in his pocket. I purchased some
figure
canvases and painted landscape on them.

Our American backgrounds made us clumsy in the French economy. We tiptoed around all the time, thus accidentally proving we had been
mal élevés
(ill brought up). The essence of an orderly society demands that each member know his or her place; otherwise, what can be the value of specialization? Therefore glass for the window is sold not at the
quincaillerie,
where fence posts may be had, but at the
droguerie,
where only a fool would seek to buy aspirin; it must then be handed over to a
vitrier
to be installed. Carpentry, for its part, should be done by a
menuisier
or a
charpentier
(depending on the grade of work required), never by the owner of the home.

Now, at M. Thouroude's
quincaillerie
in Pont l'Evêque, I realized that once again I did not have my dictionary with me and did not know what to call what I wanted; and remembered, too, that M. Thouroude had been watching for me since last summer, when I had let it slip within his hearing that rather than spending four hundred dollars on a ladder so as to replace some lost slates on the
auvent,
I proposed to make one myself using tree branches from the woods, relying only on the assistance of my equally misguided son Christopher (my eldest), who had come with me. M. Thouroude had begged me to be prudent, writing down the names and addresses of two roofers he recommended and assuring me that this was a matter for a professional. If I was not prepared at once to invest in repairs to the slate facing, well, all right: I could tell the roofer that my intention was to have the slates replaced someday. The roofer would merely drape the house in plastic until Monsieur was ready. Only over his own protest did M. Thouroude consent to sell me tar paper, roofing nails, and no ladder.

Steeling myself, I entered the
quincaillerie.
M. Thouroude, a tall, lean man in overalls, exactly the same age he had always been, came over to greet me—With a sad grin of sympathetic condolence? I wondered, or was I being overly sensitive?—
“Monsieur? Vous désirez?”

I looked around the shop but saw nothing to point to among the firebacks, drill sets, spades, and spools of chain. Forced to fall back on narrative, I explained the problem of the owl. M. Thouroude listened with care and suggested that I close my windows before retiring. After I explained further, he wondered aloud if I planned to put up a fence around my house in order to keep the owls from entering.

No, I replied; the problem was the chimney. “Ah, well,” M. Thouroude said, “there are persons who specialize in such things as chimneys. Do not take matters into your own hands, Monsieur, I beg you. What you want is a
couvreur
[roofer] who will install a grille of the correct size at the top of your chimney. I can recommend two roofers. Talk to them both, then choose one.”

No, I would do it myself, I said. I began to describe what I had in mind. The line of waiting customers grew and carefully appeared not to be listening. “But you would need to get up to the top of the chimney,” M. Thouroude protested suspiciously. “You might fall.” I did not flatter myself that he recalled my proposal to make my own ladder; nor, equally, could I flatter myself that he did not remember it.

When he at last understood that I was not to be dissuaded, M. Thouroude led me to the shed across the courtyard next to his shop, as I explained that I did not intend to risk my life in dealing with my owl problem. Spotting a tall roll of chicken wire resting among metal fence posts, scythes, posthole diggers, barbed wire, sacks of cement, ladders, stakes, and handles, I told him to cut me five meters. M. Thouroude insisted that for my own good, he must know how I intended to proceed.

“I'm going to roll it and stuff it up the chimney,” I told him.

M. Thouroude shook his head and snipped dolefully: He would rather sell me nothing at all than participate in such a grave miscarriage of hardware. “The owls will continue to descend your chimney,” he threatened. “And now, finding this wire for a foundation, they will build their nests on it and thus your chimney will fill with twigs and feathers and you will set fire to your house.”

He wrote, with pencil on a paper bag, the names and addresses and phone numbers of two roofers whom he suggested I consult instead of going ahead with my rash strategy. He told me exactly how to find them, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The line of customers waited, ostentatiously not taking notes, while M. Thouroude, advising, coiled my wire, tied it with twine, and wrapped it in heavy brown paper. He accepted my money and wrote out a receipt. For seven dollars I had obtained thirty minutes' worth of undivided attention from an expert.

ELEVEN

On my way back to the farm, I was delayed by cattle in the drive. The farmer who rented the fields raised beef, which was more and more the usual practice in these parts, replacing dairy farming. Milk products were subsidized, but dairy was labor-intensive, and the labor itself unremitting. Until five years earlier, Mme. Vera had milked her own twenty-some cows twice a day, by hand. My son Christopher (then fourteen) helped her the summer he stopped drinking milk. That same summer he learned that it was possible to eat twelve croissants at a sitting. He also learned everything about artificial insemination, as well as the other method applauded by the Pope of Rome, and about births and stillbirths and the thousand intimate ways cows and their excrement can intermingle.

What faced me in the drive—it was toward noon, still hot and dry, when I returned from my errand—was a bull, a couple of males too old for veal and too young for stud, and a passel of heifers, cows, and calves, the youngest of whom were totteringly new.

We had never found a way to keep the fences intact. Perhaps, as one friend, ecologically minded as only an urban visitor could be, had once suggested, they were contrary to the spirit of the place. The ones we built along the driveway immediately succumbed to mysterious maladies. According to the rental contract, it was the tenant's responsibility to maintain the fences.
“Ces gens là, il faut les prendre par le coeur”
(“These people, you have to grab them by the heart”), my mother once said, quoting a friend of hers from an older generation on how to get something done in the country. In my impetuous American way, I told my mother that maybe her friend was reaching too high.

The formal terms of our relationship—that is, of the relationship between Mme. Tonnelier, renter, and my mother, hereditary proprietor—were still maintained under the language of the relevant articles of the
Code Civil
of 1804, a replacement for the forelock-tugging,
droit-du-seigneur
approach of the old Norman usages as altered by the dictates of the newly created centralized state. Twice yearly, on the feast of Saint Michael (September 29) and on Christmas Day, in equal installments, rent was due to the tune of 180 kilograms of farmer's butter and 260 kilograms of second-rate beef (
viande de boeuf en deuxième qualité
), net weight. Fortunately for us, current practice was to render this
fermage
in its cash equivalent.

I herded the second-rate beasts out of the way with the car's horn. The fields along the driveway were busy with magpies, and I both saw and heard the pair of hawks hunting above as I drove up toward the house. Mme. Vera was busy in the fenced yard in front of her house, a hundred feet from mine, washing the slab of cement that was part of her courtyard with a stiff broom and water from a hose, under a broad sky of brilliant blue across which fat clouds rushed, high up and in opposite directions to each other, making fast shadows swirl across the green hillside, as if the world were being stirred with a long-handled spoon.

Mme. Vera's courtyard, 1988. Photo Walter Chapin

Mme. Vera was surrounded by dogs, ducks, and chickens, as well as a slinking outrider of feral cats. I drove the car down to the broad area next to the thatched garage attached to her house, originally built for the Friesekes' Ford and later considered by my parents as a suitable place to store the Citroën during the winter. The spirit of the place preferred otherwise, however, so they arranged for active storage with the Citroën
garagiste
in Pont l'Evêque, from whom I had hidden the day before. The addition at the far end of her cottage had been built on as my grandfather's studio, though he often painted in the house. That space, like the garage and much of the remainder of Mme. Vera's quarters, now served as a general storage area and chicken run.